California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Tolefree, C084687 (Cal. App. 2019):
Defendant's contention that the trial court's failure to give CALCRIM No. 200 violated a duty to inform the jury that they must follow the law is equally unavailing. Defendant argues requiring the court to "inform the jury in all cases that the jurors are the exclusive judges of all questions of fact submitted to them and of the credibility of the witnesses" implies a sua sponte duty to instruct the jury that the judge is the exclusive law giver and the instructions it receives must be obeyed. ( 1127, italics added.) We are not persuaded. Defendant's citation to section 1122 is equally unhelpful. That statute provides, in relevant part, that "[a]fter the jury has been sworn and before the people's opening address, the court shall instruct the jury generally concerning its basic functions, duties, and conduct." ( 1122, subd. (a).) By its terms, section 1122 is not applicable to the trial court's failure to give CALCRIM No. 200 because it is a post-trial instruction. And defendant concedes there is no authority for the proposition that a trial court's "duty to instruct sua sponte 'on those general principles of law that are closely and openly connected with the facts before the court and necessary for the jury's understanding of the case' " (People v. Simon (2016) 1 Cal.5th 98, 143, italics added) can be stretched to include a duty to instruct the jury on the principle that it is required to follow the law. To the extent it was adequately raised as a separate issue in his opening brief, we also reject defendant's assertion that the trial court's oral instructions to the jury created the impression that the instructions were directory rather than mandatory. Accordingly,
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defendant has not established errorstructural or otherwiseregarding the trial court's failure to give CALCRIM No. 200.
C. Prosecutorial Error
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